Master of Dragons (3 page)

“Watch it!”
Evelina cried.

Marcus jerked his
head around, saw that he was steering them perilously close to a tangle of
grass and dead tree branches. He gave the oars a twitch and they cleared the
hazard, though with only inches to spare.

“You’re so very
tired,” said Evelina. She reached out her hand to him, bending forward still
more. Her chemise slipped a little, revealing an enticing expanse of curves and
shadows. “You would not even need to row if we went downstream. The river would
carry us—”

“I told you back
at the landing, Evelina,” said Marcus, and his tone, though gentle, left no
room for argument. “I have to go home.”

Seated opposite
Marcus in the boat, Evelina pouted. She was accustomed to having her own way.

“At least you have
a home,” she returned, sitting up straight. By leaning forward, she had just
provided him with an enticing view of her breasts, and it all been for nothing.
He’d barely glanced at her. Therefore, she would punish him. “Your brother took
my home away from me.”

This jab, meant to
wound him with guilt, missed its mark. At the mention of his brother’s name,
Marcus’s gaze went from Evelina’s face to her blood-spattered clothes. His eyes
darkened. His lips compressed. He looked out at the trees and continued to row.

Evelina’s cheeks
burned. So that was it. The blood was Ven’s, the prince’s monstrous half-brother.
And she’d been the one to draw that blood. The last she’d seen of Ven, he was
lying on the floor dying, or so she hoped. She had saved their lives. Marcus
had told her that. He’d been grateful. Now he couldn’t look at her.

“What’s the
matter, Marcus?” Evelina demanded. She clutched at the blood-stained bodice and
tried, ineffectually, to rearrange it so that the brownish red spots did not
show. “Why do you look at me like that?”

Marcus flushed. “Like
what?” He tried to sound innocent and thereby clinched his guilt.

“Like I was
something ugly and disgusting that you’d like to squash beneath your boot. You
said you understood why I stabbed that beast of a brother, and now you hate me!”

Evelina burst into
tears that were not feigned—at least not much. She buried her head in her arms
and sobbed stormily, lifting her head once to cry, “Your brother tried to rape
me! He admitted it! And he killed my father!” Then she gave herself up to the
luxury of hysterics. She felt she’d earned it.

As she wept,
Evelina expected confidently that Marcus would stop rowing the boat, take her
in his arms, and comfort her. He didn’t. He continued to row. Admittedly, they
were fleeing mad monks and a dragon, but still Evelina felt slighted. Another
man— a true man—would have thrown caution to the winds in order to soothe her
and pet her and try to steal a kiss or slip his hand down her chemise.

Marcus just kept
rowing.

Evelina was at a
loss. Hysterics were wearing, and she couldn’t keep this up forever. The prince
obviously wasn’t going to be of any help to her. She’d have to recover on her
own. She let her sobs quiet and risked a furtive glance from under her
tear-soaked arms to see how he was taking it.

He was rowing
steadily, his eyes fixed on her. He looked uncomfortable. Maybe he was just
shy, unused to women.

I wonder how
long it will take to reach this home of his? Days, maybe. Days and nights.

Nights. Alone.
Together.
Evelina’s pulse quickened and her breath came fast at the
thought. She would have to be careful with her seduction of her prince, for he
believed her to be a maiden pure, as well as a maiden fair. He must be made to
think that he was the one who had seduced her. Evelina’s dream—dreamt from the
moment she’d first met him this very morning—was to be Her Royal Highness,
Princess Evelina, wife of His Royal Highness, Prince Marcus.

She knew that
marriage was long odds, however. The royal mistress. She would settle for that.

Evelina had
already discounted the idea of trying to convince Marcus that she was a baron’s
daughter, kidnapped by Ven, who carried her, fainting, from her father’s
castle. She was pragmatic enough to know that she could never pass for
noble-born. She could neither read nor write. She could not embroider or play
the lute. Her hands were not the smooth, fair hands of one who has never had to
dress herself, never had to wash her own hair or scrub out her own chamber pot.
Princes married farmers’ daughters only in the minstrels’ tales. In real life,
the princes took the farmers’ daughters to be their mistresses. They set them
up in fine houses in the city and gave them jewels and clothes and educated
their bastard sons and made them abbots.

Evelina resolved
to have the house, the jewels, the bastard son. Maybe not in that order. House
and jewels often came as a result of the bastard son. Her primary goal in all
this was, therefore, to get herself seduced. That was the reason she’d been
urging him to travel downstream, away from his home. The more time she spent
with him, the better. He would not go downstream, so she would have to act
fast.

Her sobs calmed to
hiccups and she timidly raised her head.

Her tears made her
eyes shimmer, even if the lids were red. The boat slid along the surface of the
sun-dappled water.

“Marcus,” Evelina
said, her voice quavering. “I know I am not like the well-born, accomplished
women you are used to being around. My father was a merchant in the city of
Fairefield. Dear man. He was respectable, kind, and gentle. Just not very
practical. My mother died when I was little, and father and I were everything
to each other. I’m sorry I stabbed your brother. I’m a good person. I really
am. Father and I went to church every week. It’s just . . . when I saw Ven ...
I saw my poor father’s body, all crumpled and twisted . . .”

“Don’t cry,
Evelina. I understand,” said Marcus. “You will have a home to go to. My home.
You saved my life. My parents will welcome you for that.”

Again, that cool
polite tone. He looked away, searching the bank for any signs of pursuit.
Evelina glowered at him, annoyed.

“I don’t want your
parents to welcome me for saving your life,” she told him beneath her breath. “I
want them to welcome me as the mother of their first grandson. And whether they
do that with open arms or cold shoulders doesn’t really matter. I’ll have you,
my love, and I’ll have your baby, and there won’t be a damn thing your parents
can do about either.”

The thought
cheered her. She had plenty of time to coax him into loving her. She had never
failed yet, with any man.

“Thank you, Your
Highness,” Evelina said softly. “I mean . . . Marcus.”

Sunlight flickered
through the over-arching boughs, forming ripples of gold that shone in Evelina’s
hair. She was dabbing her eyes with cold water. She had the loveliest face
Marcus had ever seen. His gaze went from her face to the splotches of blood on
her bodice and on her skirt and her chemise and the white skin of her neck. The
splotches had been fresh not many hours before. They had since smeared and
dried to an ugly reddish brown. Blood spots. Ven’s blood.

Evelina hadn’t
killed him, though she had meant to. Of that Marcus had no doubt. Despite that,
Ven had risked the dragon’s ire to free them. He had urged Marcus to take care
of her. Maybe he had acted out of guilt. He had admitted to Marcus that he’d
tried to rape Evelina. Without Ven, they would be both dead now, or at least
back in the clutches of Grald.

Marcus wondered
how he felt about Evelina. He thought perhaps he loved her. He remembered with
aching clarity the sight of her shapely legs when she’d kilted her skirts to
flee the monks. As he looked at her now, seated across from him, sometimes he
saw his brother’s blood and other times he saw the shadow that fell enticingly
between her full breasts.

Evelina looked at
him as no other woman had ever before looked at him—adoring, loving, admiring.
Evelina had seen him work his magic and she had not been shocked or terrified.
And she had seen him work far more powerful magicks than changing dust motes
into fairies. He imagined his lips touching her soft lips, his hand cupping her
soft and heavy breasts, and he was filled with such burning desire that he had
to firmly banish such thoughts in order to keep his mind on their peril.

Yet . . . yet . .
. even as he kissed her lips in his imaginings, he saw those lips twist into a
snarl of fury. He saw the hand that caressed him drive the knife into his
brother’s body. He saw the blood splatter onto her clothes and he saw her yank
the knife free and try to stab Ven again . . .

Marcus came to a
sudden, stark understanding. There was something secret and unspoken between
Ven and Evelina, a truth that neither of them had shared with him. He’d heard
her side of the story He wanted, very much, to hear Ven’s. His brother had
tried to tell him. Marcus had jumped to conclusions and rebuffed him.

And now it was too
late. Whatever had happened, Evelina wouldn’t tell him and Ven couldn’t, at
least not now. Perhaps, in time, Marcus would be able to contact his brother,
speak mind-to-mind, touch hand-to-hand, as they had done when they were little.
Now he didn’t dare go into the room inside his mind, the room where he could
eavesdrop on dragons’ thoughts and dreams. The room where he had first met his
brother long, long ago.

The dragon was
waiting for him in that little room.

And probably in
the cavern, as well.

“I told you,”
Evelina was saying sharply, “I don’t want to end up in that horrible cave.”

Marcus gave a
start. She had plucked the thoughts out of his head and spoken them aloud. “I
saw him there, that man they called Grald. I didn’t like the way he looked at
me. Please turn around, Marcus! Go the other way! I don’t want him to find me.”

“I don’t think
that Grald will be in the cave. That explosion we heard—”

“You don’t know
for certain he won’t be there,” Evelina pointed out, and her lower lip
quivered. “If we traveled south, we could spend a few days resting at a fine
inn . . .”

“We’re not going
south.”

Marcus smiled at
her, to take the sting out of his refusal, and shook his head, and kept rowing,
though he was aching and hurting and almost sick with fatigue.

And there it
was—the argument come around to where it began. Evelina heaved a disappointed
sigh, loud enough for him to hear.

If he did, he didn’t
let on, and Evelina ground her teeth in frustration. She needed to hide her ire
from him, however, and so she bent over the side of the boat and cupped her
hand for a drink of water. She caught a glimpse of her reflection. Evelina drew
back, horrified. She looked a fright!

Her hair was
tangled and matted with bits of twigs and leaves. Her face was covered with
dirt and streaked with tears. Her nose had swelled and her eyes were red as a
rat’s.

“No wonder he won’t
have anything to do with me,” she said to herself, appalled.

Not to mention
those accursed red-brown splotches on her bodice and her skirt.

She couldn’t do
anything about her appearance now. When they stopped for the night, she’d take
a bath (modestly provocative) and she would scrub those horrid spots out of her
chemise and her skirt.

Which would leave
her clothes sopping wet. She couldn’t put them back on. She might catch her
death of cold.

Which meant that
she and Marcus couldn’t very well continue their journey.

Not with her
having nothing whatsoever to wear . . .

STANDING WAIST
DEEP IN THE WATER, WATCHING THE BOAT CARRYING Bellona’s body drift downstream,
Ven turned to wade back to shore. Glancing down, he saw a thin trail of blood
snaking out into the water and meandering downstream. The stab wound had
reopened.

Evelina had struck
in haste. The knife had glanced off bone, avoiding any organs. He’d lost a lot
of blood, however, and he’d lost more blood when he’d slipped out of the city
of Dragonkeep to pay his last respects to the woman who had raised him and, in
her own strange way, loved him. His dragon-blood had acted promptly to start
the healing process, and the wound had already partially closed. He must have
torn it open during his strenuous exertions—carrying Bellona’s body to the
river, placing it in a boat, and casting the boat adrift, freeing her spirit to
join the spirit of her life’s love, Melisande—Ven’s mother.

The chill of the
water had kept him from noticing. The dragon-magic seemed slower to heal the
wound this time. Perhaps the magical power inside him was growing weaker as he
grew weaker. He needed to return to Dragonkeep quickly, before he collapsed. It
would never do for him to be found outside the city walls.

Emerging from the
water onto the slippery bank, he dug his claws into the mud to keep his footing
and it was then he saw the footprints. Two sets, fresh: one set small, made by
slippered feet; the other larger, wearing boots. He couldn’t spare the time to
investigate—every moment he was away was a moment his absence might be
discovered. Yet, he could not help but follow the footprints with his tracker’s
eye to try to deduce where they had gone, the two he was risking his life to
save—his half-brother, Marcus, and Evelina, the young woman who had stabbed
him.

Marcus had been
back and forth to the water’s edge several times, dragging heavy objects along
with him. Ven recalled the boats used by the monks stacked on the shore. There
were none there now. He could picture Marcus dragging down one boat after
another, shoving each out into the river to float away downstream. Marcus
would, of course, have kept one of the boats for himself and Evelina.

Ven looked back at
the river, at the bright noon sun glittering on the water. He could imagine the
two of them in the boat, Marcus rowing, fearful of pursuit. Evelina sitting in
the stern, gazing at Marcus with adoration.